Russian parliament endorses anti-U.S. adoption bill

Putin indicates he’ll sign law

A protester argues with police officers outside the Federation Council on Wednesday. Several protesters were detained Wednesday morning outside the upper chamber of Russia's parliament as it prepared to vote on a controversial measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children. The poster held by the protester reads: "Children get frozen in the Cold War." (Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AP)

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA and MANSUR MIROVALEV Associated Press

Published: December 26, 2012, 8:49 PM

Local adoption agency affected

A downtown Vancouver adoption agency on Wednesday said at least six of its clients who wanted to adopt orphans in Russia would have to look elsewhere to adopt, if a Russian ban on American adoptions is finalized.

“We’ve been talking to our Russian coordinator every day,” said Dan Roberts, executive director of Kids to Adopt. “Everyone is kind of in shock. It’s not unusual legislation. Legislation does get introduced from time to time to block adoptions in the U.S. Usually, it doesn’t get very far. What’s going on right now happened very quickly without any real warning.”

Roberts said none of his agency’s clients were far enough along in the process to have met their prospective children in Russia, so there will not be the heartache of breaking a bond with a child. The agency also has alternative adoption options lined up for those clients, including in the Eastern European countries of Ukraine and Bulgaria.

“The families were very early in the process,” he said. “All of their paperwork can easily be transferred to another country.”

Roberts said the ban wouldn’t hurt American families’ prospects of adoption because there are plenty of opportunities for that in the United States and in other countries, but it would impact Russian orphans.

He said American families can offer treatment and therapy that Russian orphans might have to do without if they remain in Russia. The move could also cause overcrowding and a strain on resources at Russian orphanages.

“I’ve been to Russia over the years, and the kids in the orphanages are generally well cared for,” he said. “They do what they can with what resources they have. If the number of orphans who are adopted goes down that means the numbers in the orphanages will go up. One would expect if the numbers continue to go up, their care is going to suffer.”

Kids to Adopt is on Broadway in downtown Vancouver and serves clients worldwide. It handles about 20 adoptions per year.

MOSCOW — Defying a storm of domestic and international criticism, Russia moved toward finalizing a ban on Americans adopting Russian children, as Parliament’s upper house voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of a measure that President Vladimir Putin has indicated he will sign into law.

The bill is widely seen as the Kremlin’s retaliation against an American law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators. It comes as Putin takes an increasingly confrontational attitude toward the West, brushing aside concerns about a crackdown on dissent and democratic freedoms.

Dozens of Russian children close to being adopted by American families now will almost certainly be blocked from leaving the country. The law also cuts off the main international adoption route for Russian children stuck in often dismal orphanages: Tens of thousands of Russian youngsters have been adopted in the U.S. in the past 20 years. There are about 740,000 children without parental care in Russia, according to UNICEF.

All 143 members of the Federation Council present voted to support the bill, which has sparked criticism from both the U.S. and Russian officials, activists and artists, who say it victimizes children by depriving them of the chance to escape the squalor of orphanage life. The vote comes days after Parliament’s lower house overwhelmingly approved the ban.

The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it regretted the Russian parliament’s decision.

“Since 1992, American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, providing them with an opportunity to grow up in a family environment,” spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement from Washington. “The bill passed by Russia’s parliament would prevent many children from enjoying this opportunity …

“It is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations,” he said.

Seven people with posters protesting the bill were detained outside the Council before Wednesday’s vote. “Children get frozen in the Cold War,” one poster read. Some 60 people rallied in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.

The bill is part of larger legislation by Putin-allied lawmakers retaliating against a recently signed U.S. law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators. Although Putin has not explicitly committed to signing the bill, he strongly defended it in a press conference last week as “a sufficient response” to the new U.S. law.

Originally Russia’s lawmakers cobbled together a more or less a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. law, providing for travel sanctions and the seizure of financial assets in Russia of Americans determined to have violated the rights of Russians.

But it was expanded to include the adoption measure and call for a ban on any organizations that are engaged in political activities if they receive funding from U.S. citizens or are determined to be a threat to Russia’s interests.

Russian children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov told the Interfax news agency that 46 children who were on the verge of being adopted by Americans would stay in Russia if the bill is approved — despite court rulings in some of these cases authorizing the adoptions.

The ombudsman supported the bill, saying that foreign adoptions discourage Russians from adopting children. “A foreigner who has paid for an adoption always gets a priority compared to potential Russian adoptive parents,” Astakhov was quoted as saying. “A great country like Russia cannot sell its children.”